No Time to Die release moved to the fall

[Frank Cox]

I wonder if this will be the start of a trend and we'll have a summer season with no tentpole movie releases and a corresponding drop in numbers of customers walking in the door.

I guess I can't blame the movie making people for holding back their next big thing if they can get more people to come and see it with a later release date, but what will that leave for the theatres to play between now and then (whenever then turns out to be)?

That could affect things upstream from the theatres, too. Someone will want to start getting their money back from production loans and stuff like that too.

Interesting times...

https://deadline.com/2020/03/no-time-to-die-release-date-moved-coronavirus-mgm-1202873876/

‘No Time To Die’ Release Date Moving To Fall In Hopes Global Theater Biz Back At Full Strength

By Anthony D'Alessandro, Nancy Tartaglione
March 4, 2020 9:00am



MGM EXCLUSIVE: With the coronavirus socking it to the Asian box office, Deadline has learned that MGM, Eon and Universal are postponing the next James Bond movie, No Time to Die from its UK and international release date of April 2 and its U.S. Easter weekend global day-and-date of April 10, and moving the 25th 007 movie to Nov. 25, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
“MGM, Universal and Bond producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, announced today that after careful consideration and thorough evaluation of the global theatrical marketplace, the release of No Time to Die will be postponed until November 2020. The film will be released in the U.K. on November 12, 2020 with worldwide release dates to follow, including the U.S. launch on November 25, 2020,” said a statement given exclusively to Deadline by the three studios.

That date brings Bond back to November, which is a season he’s launched from largely going back to 1995’s Goldeneye (except for Tomorrow Never Dies which opened in the U.S/Canada on Dec. 19, 1997). No Time to Die will now face off on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with Warner Bros. Will Smith King Richard, Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, and Sony’s comedy The Happiest Season. This is purely an economic decision we understand, and not one based on growing fears over the coronavirus. Bond is a day-and-date worldwide release, and with the franchise back in the hands of MGM fully post Sony’s distribution of the last four Daniel Craig movies, along with Universal, all parties involved need to have all foreign territories working at their maximum in order for the latest Bond to be a continued box office success. For a tentpole of this size and scope, that kind of decrease in business would have a significant and detrimental impact on the film’s ultimate global take.
I’ve heard that the move for No Time to Die should not be perceived as a concern about the safety of theaters outside of areas where public health officials have restricted or recommended against attending public events.
All together, the last four Craig 007 movies – Spectre, Skyfall, Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale — have grossed $3.2B in the overall near $7B franchise, with Skyfall being the highest grossing pic of all-time in the 58-year-old series at a whopping $1.1B. Failing at the box office is not an option for Mr. Bond, and for the studios to stick to their original release plan would be a disservice to their partners in exhibition.
Get ready for a big domino effect when it comes to rival studios following MGM/Eon/Universal’s example in re-scheduling their day-and-date event pics. It’s best to wait out the resurgence of key Asian offshore territories, if you have a major event pic on your schedule. No Time to Die, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, leaves behind a very lucrative Easter weekend period that’s up for grabs. How much does Easter weekend stand to make? The 2015 and 2016 holidays delivered back-to-back record openings with Uni’s Furious 7 ($161.2M) and Warner Bros.’ Batman v Superman ($181M) driving respective weekend grosses for all titles to $247.1M and an all-time Easter high of $278.5M Stateside.
However, ever since China shuttered its exhibition structure due to the coronavirus outbreak, MGM, Eon and Uni have been in a wait and see mode. With theaters closing across Korea, Japan, Italy and France, there was a clear need to push the release of No Time to Die. The studios have been closely monitoring the coronavirus outbreak like many other companies, and have seen a significant impact on the global market with all industries facing difficult decisions during these uncertain times.
China alone is poised to lose more than $2 billion since shutting 70K theaters this year. The release dates for Universal’s Dolittle and 1917, Searchlight Pictures’ Jojo Rabbit, Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog, and Pixar’s Onward have all been postponed indefinitely. For the period of Jan. 1-March 3, Comscore reports that South Korea’s box office is -60%, Italy’s is off 70-75% with roughly half of its cinemas closed (through we’ve heard that’s bound to improve by this weekend), Taiwan is down 30% year on year, along with Singapore (-35%), Philippines (-35%) and Hong Kong (-55%). In total, the global box office is expected to see at least a $5B hit in 2020.
Recent Bond movies have typically had their openings staggered around the globe over two weekends, with initial debut in the UK and select territories, followed by the U.S. and other offshore markets.
For example, when 2015’s Spectre opened in the U.S. to $70.4M, it added 71 markets in its second foreign weekend for a take of $117.38M, bringing its overseas cume to $219.22M and WW haul to $289.6M.
When Skyfall opened to a franchise domestic record of $88.3M in Nov. 2012, the pic’s running overseas tally was at $428.6M, bringing its global take to $516.9M (all numbers unadjusted for inflation).
Uni has No Time to Die all over the world sans some legacy MGM markets, i.e Nordic territories and the Middle East which are being sub-distributed. A UK world premiere was scheduled for Monday, March 30. Originally No Time to Die was to go April 2 and 3 in UK & Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Serbia, Slovenia, India, South Africa, and Turkey. Then in sync with U.S, the following overseas markets were to open on April 8-10: Australia & NZ, Belgium, France, Italy, Russia, Ukraine, Baltics, Indonesia, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, and All of Latin America
The decision to movie No Time to Die, we hear, was fully supported by everyone involved with the movie.

[Mike Blakesley]

I think this has more to do with the international appeal of James Bond than anything else... they really need the overseas bucks on this.

Not that other movies don't need overseas $ too, but James Bond does VERY well overseas compared to some other franchises.

So they're waiting until the Corona hysteria is over. I heard that Disney is moving Mulan too, in some countries (but not the US).

[Jim Cassedy]

According to CDC figures a couple of days ago, it's estimated that there have been appx 3,000 deaths
world-wide from coronavirus since December, while the regular "flu" has killed over 46,000 people
in roughly the same time period. So I'm not sure I'm ready to panic yet. Of course one thing to take
into consideration, is that there are vaccines for the flu, whereas so far there are none for the
coronoavirus, so if it starts to spread, it could get out of control, I guess.

That being said- - I got an e-mail from The Union the other day, admonishing workers to stay home
if they feel at all sick, rather than risk infecting a whole crew. This union also provides tech workers
for all the big conventions & trade shows here in San Francisco, and they also advised members to
"be mindful" of their personal expenses & finances, since several large events usually held in San
Francisco (such as the World-Wide Facebook Developers Conference, which I've worked at in the
past) have canceled this year, meaning that there will be fewer job opportunities in upcoming months.

While I'm far from living paycheck-to-paycheck, I'm also beginning to wonder of any of the film
festivals I usually work at will be cancelled this year- - or if it will affect the 70mm TENENT release.

So, while I'm not quite ready to panic yet, I am beginning to get a bit apprehensive over how it
will affect the exhibition & entertainment industry.

At this point, I'm still more concerned about the panic than the pandemic.

> UPDATE: I just heard that The Stanford Theater in Palo Alto- - ( a venue well known for the
quality of their programing and presentation standards, and especially dear to my heart since
they are still using carbon arcs) - has announced it is temporarily closing due to the virus situation.
[Palo Alto is about 35mi south of San Francisco]

[Martin McCaffery]

The irony is if the corona virus follows flu patterns, they will be opening the movie in the middle of an even bigger outbreak. Stay tuned.

[Bobby Henderson]

While there is indeed a good amount of hysteria, and even stupid unethical behavior, being sparked by the spread of this novel coronavirus, it's a situation that still needs to be taken seriously.

On average seasonal influenza kills about 1 in 2000 infected, a .05% mortality rate. The mortality rate of those infected with novel coronavirus has been around 2%, but pushed higher to 3.4% in the last couple days. So while seasonal flu kills tens of thousands of Americans each year (80,000 in the 2017-18 flu season) that death toll is coming from tens of millions of infections. If the same enormous numbers of Americans are infected with this novel coronavirus strain then the death toll would easily be in the hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more people.

A little over 100 years ago the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 killed 50 million people worldwide, 675,000 in the US. That was a strain of H1N1 from birds. 500 million people were infected, 1/3 of the world's population at that time.

There is no dispute at all that this particular novel coronavirus is very contagious. Experts have been warning that it is likely some people may not realize they're infected due to no symptoms or symptoms no worse than a dry cough or minor cold. These people are not likely to visit a doctor or even stay home from work. The risk is they'll unwittingly spread the virus to many other people, some of whom are more likely to develop the severe COVID-19 respiratory illness. That's the big danger. That's how we can move from a relatively small number of deaths, around 3000 globally now, to a death toll that runs into the millions or even tens of millions.

I wonder if this will be the start of a trend and we'll have a summer season with no tentpole movie releases and a corresponding drop in numbers of customers walking in the door.

I guess it all depends on how much success (or luck) authorities have with containing the novel coronavirus spread, how soon they can get it under control, provided IF they can get the spread under control. Infections and COVID-19 hospitalizations at the epicenter in China seem to be on the decline. But now Chinese authorities are doing more to block entry to the country out of concern of foreign visitors re-introducing the virus to other population centers in China. The situation in Italy is pretty rough. Same for Iran. The case load in the US is relatively small, but that could change (especially since our population is so mobile).

My larger worry is for the long term. If novel coronavirus infections and COVID-19 deaths cause a big disruption to the movie theater business there is a chance attendance numbers may not return to previous levels once this crisis is finished. Home video has already been making the situation worse for theaters, thanks to ever shorter release windows and the growing popularity of streaming. If theaters end up closing for weeks or even months the risk is the theater industry could cede even more ground to home video.

If this coronavirus situation turns into a pandemic it could permanently change audience behaviors. I'm praying that doesn't happen. 70% of America's economy is based on consumer spending. And most of that still involves people going to brick and mortar stores to buy things, eat at restaurants, see movies, go to church, etc. People have to get out of the house (and drive their vehicles) to keep the economic engine moving.

[Frank Cox]

A whole industry (like theatres) can't just be stopped and re-started on a dime either. How many employees (both actual staff and folks like suppliers and technicians) can afford to sit around and wait for an indefinite time until the theatre might re-open?

Some folks will move on to other jobs, some might retire, and when the "all clear" sounds, how many will be left to unlock the doors and get the ball rolling again?

[Bobby Henderson]

Yeah, it's not going to be good if any theaters are closed for weeks or even months. It's all but guaranteed theaters would quickly lose a lot of "grunt-level" staff. Then there's the question of what would happen with employees on a salary. Are the big chains going to continue cutting paychecks for those folks while screens are dark? In some markets there is a very limited pool of available, ready to hire labor. Given the fact many movie theaters are already operating on narrow margins they only have so much wiggle room financially. They could end up fighting over the same bodies with other businesses in need of service sector labor. The workers are going to go wherever the paychecks are the best.

[Jim Cassedy]

Two articles about theater closings during the 1918 flu epidemic I found online. one from The Boston Globe,
and the other from The Omaha Bee, both dated October 1918. (Unfortunately, the thumbnails I was able to
get without a paid subscription were very low resolution, so not much more than the headline was readable)

[Martin McCaffery]

Here's one for you
Montgomery (AL) Advertiser
October 9, 1918
(Don't forget to buy Liberty Bonds!)

[Lyle Romer]

While there is indeed a good amount of hysteria, and even stupid unethical behavior, being sparked by the spread of this novel coronavirus, it's a situation that still needs to be taken seriously.

On average seasonal influenza kills about 1 in 2000 infected, a .05% mortality rate. The mortality rate of those infected with novel coronavirus has been around 2%, but pushed higher to 3.4% in the last couple days. So while seasonal flu kills tens of thousands of Americans each year (80,000 in the 2017-18 flu season) that death toll is coming from tens of millions of infections. If the same enormous numbers of Americans are infected with this novel coronavirus strain then the death toll would easily be in the hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more people.

A little over 100 years ago the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 killed 50 million people worldwide, 675,000 in the US. That was a strain of H1N1 from birds. 500 million people were infected, 1/3 of the world's population at that time.

There is no dispute at all that this particular novel coronavirus is very contagious. Experts have been warning that it is likely some people may not realize they're infected due to no symptoms or symptoms no worse than a dry cough or minor cold. These people are not likely to visit a doctor or even stay home from work. The risk is they'll unwittingly spread the virus to many other people, some of whom are more likely to develop the severe COVID-19 respiratory illness. That's the big danger. That's how we can move from a relatively small number of deaths, around 3000 globally now, to a death toll that runs into the millions or even tens of millions.



I guess it all depends on how much success (or luck) authorities have with containing the novel coronavirus spread, how soon they can get it under control, provided IF they can get the spread under control. Infections and COVID-19 hospitalizations at the epicenter in China seem to be on the decline. But now Chinese authorities are doing more to block entry to the country out of concern of foreign visitors re-introducing the virus to other population centers in China. The situation in Italy is pretty rough. Same for Iran. The case load in the US is relatively small, but that could change (especially since our population is so mobile).

My larger worry is for the long term. If novel coronavirus infections and COVID-19 deaths cause a big disruption to the movie theater business there is a chance attendance numbers may not return to previous levels once this crisis is finished. Home video has already been making the situation worse for theaters, thanks to ever shorter release windows and the growing popularity of streaming. If theaters end up closing for weeks or even months the risk is the theater industry could cede even more ground to home video.

If this coronavirus situation turns into a pandemic it could permanently change audience behaviors. I'm praying that doesn't happen. 70% of America's economy is based on consumer spending. And most of that still involves people going to brick and mortar stores to buy things, eat at restaurants, see movies, go to church, etc. People have to get out of the house (and drive their vehicles) to keep the economic engine moving.

The one caveat is that the mortality rate has been based on the number of confirmed cases. Testing has not been done on a wide enough swath of the general population to detect people with mild or asymptomatic cases. Except, South Korea has tested a huge number of people. In South Korea where they have tested a far higher percentage of the population, less than 0.8% of the active cases are considered serious or critical. That's compared to an worldwide combined percentage of 16%.

If the data out of South Korea is giving a far more accurate picture of how many serious illnesses (and related fatalities) are caused by this virus, then it acts very similar to the flu. Even going with the more worse case data, the mortality rate is very low except among the elderly and people with underlying health conditions. This information comes from the WHO.

[Leo Enticknap]

The problem is that we don't know how many people have had this bug with such minor symptoms (or even asymptotically) that they didn't even have any contact with the medical profession at all - they just bought a packet of Motrins from their local Stater Bros and then sat it out at home. Without knowing how many such people exist, the mortality figures as a proportion of reported cases can't be relied upon as a proportion of those who got the bug in total.

My fear is not so much that movie theaters will actually close (either voluntarily or as the result of being ordered to do so by government), but rather that ticket sales will crater as a result of people buying into the hysteria and simply staying away. As Bobby points out, getting these people back again when this all dies down will be very tough.

As a side note, my wife, son and I went on a short cruise for our vacation last year. Since then, I have had a spam email from Carnival trying to get us to book another one probably around once or twice a week. But in the last two weeks or so, the frequency has ramped up to around two or three a day! Furthermore, I am now getting paper junk mail from them as well. They are slashing the price of cruises, presumably because bookings for future cruises are now are dead in the water (sorry, couldn't resist), and they're having to fire sale them. The publicity has been about the worst thing possible for that industry (short of a ship sinking and killing hundreds): we now have two ships full of passengers stranded in the middle of the ocean, not allowed to dock anywhere (including one just outside San Francisco), with increasing numbers of coronavirus cases, and deaths, on board. Oh, and Mike Pence's Freudian slip in a radio talk show interview last week (when he referred to the Diamond Princess as the Corona Princess) didn't exactly help, either...

All it would take is for a major cluster of cases to be traced back to a movie theater, and we could be in a similar situation.

Still, as of now, at any rate, it looks like Cinemacon is still on. We are preparing for it as usual.

[Mike Blakesley]

I just got an email from a newspaper that said the U.S. State Department is recommending that U.S. citizens not travel on cruise ships. Wow, how would you like to be the owner of several 3,000 passenger ships and have a couple thousand people cancel off each of them?

No effects around here so far, except the stores are all out of sanitizer, but I assume they'll get restocked soon.

[Frank Cox]

Toilet paper. Every time there's anything unusual happening people flock to the store to buy toilet paper.

One of the long-time employees at the local Coop grocery store told me that some years ago -- just watch for all of the people buying toilet paper whenever there's a storm in the forecast. And he was absolutely right. Gosh, do people buy toilet paper. It's sort of a comfort purchase I guess; you feel better knowing that you have a large stock of toilet paper in your house.

Any time I've been in the grocery store in the past couple of weeks there are always people carrying packages of toilet paper.

[Jim Cassedy]

Friday, I had lunch with a friend in downtown San Francisco at one of my favorite
Chinese restaurants. Virus fears didn't seem to have hurt their business, as it was
just as crowded as it always is. But when I got home, I realize that I had somewhow
lost the little bottle of hand sanitizer that I have clipped to the bag I usually carry.
I knew it would be impossible to find a replacement at a pharmacy or big-box store,
so I looked online. This listing on Amazon was typical of what I found:





(Geez, at that price maybe somebody swiped it while I was waiting to cross the street)

[Leo Enticknap]

I just got an email from a newspaper that said the U.S. State Department is recommending that U.S. citizens not travel on cruise ships. Wow, how would you like to be the owner of several 3,000 passenger ships and have a couple thousand people cancel off each of them?

Furthermore, the standard wording of most travel insurance policies is that if a government advisory not to go is issued after you've bought the policy and before the issue that caused the advisory became public knowledge, they will cover a full refund if the travel vendor won't. IIRC, coronavirus first became a major news story around the back end of January, and so anyone who booked cruises before then will presumably be eligible for a full insurance claim, even if they are non-refundable/non-transferable as far as the cruise line is concerned. So the insurance industry will likely take a major hit from this, too.